by Tracy Grant
“A textile mill,” Charles said. “I don’t know the exact date, but it was in November.”
“The 11th,” David was staring down at the paper, an odd look on his face. “Some of the Tavistock company were performing there. Will went to join them after I got him released from Lancaster jail.”
“And there was Luddite activity round Rochdale last December,” Mélanie said, looking at yet another entry. She turned to David whose face had darkened. “David—“
“Ned Blakeney’s from there. Another of the actors. Yes, he and Will are friends.”
“Has Will been to visit him in Rochdale?”
“I’m not sure.”
"Will almost always wears spectacles when he isn't on stage, doesn't he?" Mélanie said. She shot Charles a look. Sam Lucan's description of the man he'd seen in the tavern with Raoul O'Roarke hung between them. Longish dark hair and spectacles. Charles could see Will lounging on sofa in the Tavistock's green room, dark hair hanging almost to his shoulders, spectacles propped on the bridge of his nose.
"Are you saying you think Father was right and St. Juste was employed by English Radicals?" David asked, oblivious to the significance of the spectacles. "Are you suggesting Will might have been working with him?”
Mélanie ran her fingers over the glued-together paper. "St. Juste decoded this. Which doesn't make a lot of sense if he's behind the incidents."
"Unless the list was put together by someone trying to uncover what was behind the incidents rather than the person who orchestrated them," Charles said. "Assuming they were orchestrated. Assuming the list means what we suspect. In any case, it’s worthwhile talking to Will."
"He won't be performing tonight," David said. "The new play doesn't open for another fortnight."
"No, but it’s Friday.” Charles exchanged a look with Mélanie. "He’ll be at the Bartletts'.”
Oliver Lydgate leaned his head against the silk damask upholstery of the wing-back chair in his wife’s boudoir. The fabric was cool and soft, like the touch of Isobel’s fingers. He closed his eyes and breathed in the lavender with which she lined her wardrobe and chest of drawers and the violet of the toilet water in the crystal bottles on her satinwood dressing table.
He sat thus in the dark, the heat of the fire lapping at the coldness inside him, until the door eased open.
He fixed his gaze fixed on the leaping flames behind the Chinese firescreen. “You're earlier than I expected.”
"Mama retired to bed as soon as we finished dinner. Lucy's out somewhere with David.” He heard the stir of Isobel’s skirts round her long legs. “Oliver—"
“Billy accused Rose of eating more than her share of the trifle and Rose threw a currant at him. Amelia said she was glad she didn’t have to eat in public with them. She sounds more like you every day.”
“You ate dinner in the nursery.”
“It seemed a good idea. They were all a bit ragged round the edges.”
“I tried to explain when I saw them this afternoon.”
“I don’t think my only role in the nursery is to fill in when you can’t be there.”
“No of course not. I didn’t mean—” She swept into view. She still wore the black pelisse trimmed with jet velvet. The ensemble of a grieving widow. "I'm sure you want to talk."
He watched the glow of firelight brighten the pale green mountains painted on the firescreen. A magical kingdom of impossible dreams. “It’s not really surprising. We discussed it very frankly when we became betrothed. Only the subject was my potential lapses of conduct, not yours. But I suppose it’s only fair to assume the same rules apply to both of us."
Isobel looked down at him. The firelight struck sparks from her uncovered hair. "How long have you known?"
"Did you really think I wouldn’t notice such a change in the woman I live with?”
“’Live’ is a difficult word to define, Oliver. We occupy the same house.”
“I know you. In every sense of the word, I might add. I don’t know that I could ever claim you were mine, but whatever part of you I had a claim to is less mine than it once was.”
“Oliver—“
“I’m endeavoring to be mature about it. Now. I’m afraid I wasn’t so self-possessed at first. I even went so far as to hire someone to follow you.”
“Dear God.”
He curled his fingers round the cold, expensive silk of the chair arms. “Not the way Mallinsons do things, but then I’m not a Mallinson.”
“You hired someone to hop in and out of hackneys, skulk in doorways— For God’s sake, Oliver. How—“
“Humiliating? If it’s any comfort I think I was more humiliated than you.”
“Why didn’t you—“
“Ask you? I suppose because a part of me hoped it wasn’t true.”
Isobel moved away from the fire and began to unclasp her pelisse. “It isn’t anything to do with you.”
“Do you know, I actually believe that. Nothing between us has been anything to do with me for a long time.”
She snapped open another clasp. “I’ve never embarrassed you publicly. I hope I never will.”
“My thanks, madam.”
She laid the pelisse over the sofa, smoothing the fabric. “Did you know he'd be at the ball last night?”
“How could I? I didn't know who he was. But I couldn't help but suspect he'd be there.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Her dove-colored gown fell in cool, classical folds about her. Athena. Or perhaps Diana. Charles would know the appropriate allusion. “Ah, now it comes,” he said. “You wonder if I killed him?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“It’s what Mélanie wondered. I could see it in her eyes. I have an excellent motive. So do you, I suppose, depending on how the affair had progressed. How had it, by the way?”
“That’s none—“
“Of my business? Perhaps not at first, but once your lover met his death in our house, I’m afraid I became inextricably involved.”
Isobel dropped down on the sofa. “I can understand you’d have been surprised. I never gave you cause to believe I’d behave in such a way. I never meant to behave in such a way. I hope you believe that at least.”
“For what it’s worth, yes.”
“Thank you.” She put her hand to her head, dislodging a thick, straight lock of hair. She looked younger, more like the girl he’d tried to propose to in the Carfax House conservatory. “I’m afraid I’m woefully lacking at skill in such matters. Perhaps I should have asked Emily Cowper for advice. Should I have dropped you a tactful hint about the matter? But then you’ve never dropped me such hints.”
He tilted his head back and looked straight into her eyes. They looked very blue just now. “Perhaps I would have done if I’d had anything to drop hints about.”
“I may not be completely up to snuff, Oliver, but I’m not stupid. It’s all right. I gave you leave.”
“Without my ever asking for it. Very kind of you, though it was a bit lowering to be forgiven for misbehavior I hadn’t even contemplated.”
Her chin jerked up.
“Did you really think I wasn’t capable of keeping my promises?” he said.
“You were in love with someone else.”
“I had been in love with someone who had since married another man. Do you think when Sylvie chose St. Ives over me I clung to her skirts like her lap dog?”
“Not any more than I believe you stopped loving her simply because you weren’t able to make her your wife.”
“Fair enough. I’ll always care for Sylvie in some way. But I was never her lover. Not in the carnal sense.”
“Not for want of wanting.”
“That doesn’t change the promises I made to you.”
“Which were?”
“Along the lines of to have and to hold, to love and to cherish as I recall. And something about worshipping you with my body. Forsaking all others.”
“You can’t expect me to believe—“
“What?” He flung the question out like a glove thrown in challenge. “Who?”
“You have a half dozen pretty women clustered about you at every entertainment we attend. You can scarcely cross a room without flirting.”
“It doesn’t—“
“Have anything to do with me?”
“Flirtation isn’t the same as taking a lover. I’ve never done that.” The need for her to understand was a sort of primal tug he could not explain. “Believe me, Bel.”
“If that’s true why the devil didn’t you ever—“
“Say so? ‘I know you think I’m a rutting bastard, wife, but I’m actually trying to be a faithful husband.’ I never thought that was the sort of thing that needed to be said.”
“I never asked you to—“
“I know. But I thought the least I could do was take the marriage as seriously as you did. As I thought you did.”
She passed a hand over her face and rubbed her temples. “A year ago—even last summer—that would have meant a great deal to me. Now— It makes my criminal conversation more of a crime. But I’m not sure it really changes anything.”
“Because you’re still in love with him?”
“Because it doesn’t change the nature of the bargain we made. You know why you offered for me.”
“Do I?”
“We both needed something and we got it from each other. It wasn’t love or even fidelity.”
“Quite true. In that sense you’ve kept your bargain to perfection.” He watched her for a moment. In the lamplight, her skin had the sheen of marble. “It must have been hard for you last night. Seeing him.”
“Yes.” She got to her feet. “To own the truth, I still can’t quite believe it.”
"I lied for you,” Oliver said.
She turned to look down at him.
“I told Mélanie I was watching you last night. Which was true. But I said I never lost sight of you. That you didn’t leave the ballroom until after the murder was discovered.”
Isobel continued to stare at him with a glassy gaze.
“That isn’t true, of course,” Oliver continued, “as you well know. Despite my best efforts I lost sight of you for a good twenty minutes and I’m quite certain you weren’t in the ballroom.” He looked up at her for a long moment, more than long enough to stab a knife through the chest of a trusting beloved. “The question is where were you?”
Chapter 18
I knew Laura Dudley was the ideal governess. She didn't bat an eyelash when the cat jumped up on the sofa table and started lapping cream from the tea service.
Mélanie Fraser to Lady Isobel Lydgate,
29 March 1816
Charles collapsed in his corner of the carriage and let out a whoop of laughter that rebounded off watered silk and polished mahogany.
“Darling?” Mélanie tried to read her husband's face in the flashes of lamplight.
“Sorry.” He wiped his eyes. “But surely you must see the humorous side.”
“Of—?”
“My father, who happens to be your former spymaster, may have hired St. Juste to seduce one my closest friends and gain a hold over her father, who happens to be my former spymaster. I don’t see what response there is to that other than laughter. Save tears.”
She regarded him for a moment through the gloom. His face was a mask of shadows. “That’s the second time today you’ve referred to Raoul as your father.”
“Is it? Well, it would ruin the joke if I called him anything else.”
She continued to watch him while they rattled over a half dozen more yards of cobblestones. The rain had started up again, pounding on the hackney roof, sloshing beneath the wheels. "You think Raoul told St. Juste to seduce Bel?"
"If St. Juste is working for O'Roarke that's the obvious assumption. Carfax and O'Roarke have been antagonists since long before the Peninsula. Carfax was running intelligence for the English army in Ireland in '98 when O'Roarke was involved in the uprising."
"So now you think Raoul is orchestrating Radical activity in England rather than plotting to extract Bonaparte from St. Helena?"
"Perhaps. Though O'Roarke has certainly proved himself capable of running two operations at once."
"His operations have never been centered in England."
"But he's nothing if not flexible. We're back to the question of what he'd do and why."
She gripped the carriage strap as they rounded a corner. "Raoul used to talk to me a lot about the Irish uprising. Especially when he’d had a few glasses of wine. I think he kept trying to make sense of what had gone wrong.” She could see him, wine glass in hand, leaning toward her across a table or sprawled on the floor by the fire. “It wasn’t the fact that it turned violent that infuriated him. Difficult for an uprising not to be violent, he’d argue. It was the disorganization, the lack of communication between the factions, the wanton destruction that served no purpose—“
“You think he’d claim the acts on that list we found in St. Juste’s room served a purpose?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t know that he’d have shrunk from them if he thought they’d achieve the ends he wanted.” Mélanie smoothed her hands over the skirt of her pelisse. “Whom do you identify with in Julius Caesar?”
“Portia,” he said without hesitation. “I never know what my spouse is plotting.”
“Then we’re consistent at least. I’ve always felt an affinity for Brutus.”
“So when Napoleon Bonaparte made himself Emperor you thought about assassinating him?”
“That’s my Charles. No fancy footwork, just a nice, clean thrust to the heart. No, obviously. But I can imagine—“
“Killing someone for a good cause?”
Her fingers clenched on the smooth folds of her pelisse. “What else is war?”
“Except that in a war, someone else is trying to kill you.”
“Someone has to start the killing. Raoul would say that we’ve been at war against poverty and injustice for years.”
The leather creaked as Charles shifted his position on the seat. “Antony thinks that Brutus’s motives set him apart from the other conspirators. But it doesn’t change his thinking Brutus was wrong.”
“And yet in the end he calls Brutus the noblest Roman. Brutus put his cause above the life of his friend.”
“Most causes come down to people in the end. If you overlook the people for the cause, then how do you warp the cause?”
“But how can you change anything by playing by the rules when the rules are being set by the people running the system you’re trying to change?”
For a moment she had a clear memory of sitting round her dining table in Berkeley Square one evening the previous autumn. David and Simon and Oliver and Isobel had come to dine. The port had long since been brought, but she and Isobel had not retired to the drawing room. David had been discussing a speech he planned to make in support of Lord Althrop’s motion for an inquiry over the Peterloo carnage. Simon had clunked down the decanter and said, Where the hell is that going to get you? Even if it passes, do you think it will change anything? The usual irony had been quite gone from his face and voice.
David had taken out his handkerchief and blotted up the port that had splashed from the decanter. It’s a start, he’d said, in a hard, even voice.
That’s brilliant, David. Simon had stared at David with the full force of the caustic wit Mélanie had never seen him turn on his lover. The Government used troops to break up a peaceful meeting. Women and children were trampled in the streets. And you’re going to make a speech saying they shouldn’t have done it.
A few weeks later when the bill had failed to pass, Simon hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t needed to.
Mélanie turned her head against the squabs to look at her husband. "Sometimes I think I've become the most shocking coward."
He stretched out a hand and laid it over her own. “My darling, you’re a lot of things, but you’re no coward.”
&
nbsp; "I just enjoy living a life of luxury in a system I claim to disapprove of."
"The sacrifices one makes for marriage."
"I'm not sure how funny that is."
"I'm not sure how funny I meant it to be."
Before she could reply, the hackney came to a stop. They had pulled up in front of the Bartletts’ red brick terrace house in Sloane Street. A sedate, uniform house, but its orderly sash windows, neat chimneys, and wrought iron railings contained a family that were decidedly unorthodox.
Godfrey, the family manservant, who had joined the household after George Bartlett got him acquitted on charges of thievery three years before, ushered them into the slate-flagged entry hall, took their dripping umbrella, and helped them out of their outer garments.
“They’re all in the drawing room, he said, nodding toward the stairs. “You know the way.”
The strains of a song by their Viennese friend Schubert, which Mélanie had given Hetty Bartlett the music for, drifted from the drawing room. The air smelled of colza oil from the urn-shaped hanging lamps, drying wool garments, Cotswolds cheese, and sherry.
“Charles. Mélanie.” George Bartlett swept up to them, as though propelled by a strong gust of wind. He was a broad-shouldered man with a shock of thinning hair the color of damp birch leaves, a sharp-featured face, and hazel eyes that burned with intensity. By profession he was a barrister, known for the erudition of his arguments as well as the inflammatory nature of the cases he chose to take on. “Charles, here’s a new one for you. ‘The good of the people is the chief law.’”
“Cicero.”
“Damn it, boy, you’re too well read. You take all the fun out of things. Wonderful quote, must use it in a closing. It’s good to see you both. We’ve missed you. Haven’t turned too Whigish, have you?”
“Perish the thought,” Charles said. “You’d never say so if you heard the talk in the coffee room at Brooks’s.”
“I was in the coffee room at Brooks’s once. Damned stuffy. That was a good speech on the evils of the corn laws, though it didn’t go far enough.”
